President Obama on Friday defended the Democrats' healthcare law, saying the enormous expansion of insurance coverage made an increase in healthcare spending inevitable.

"As a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people healthcare, at the margins that's going to increase our costs — we knew that," the president told reporters during a White House press conference.

"We didn't think that we were going to cover 30 million people for free."

Obama was responding to questions about new cost projections, crunched by economists at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), revealing the nation's healthcare spending, as a share of the economy, will be 0.3 percentage points higher in 2019 than estimated before the law was passed.

That CMS report, published Thursday in the journal Health Affairs, also revealed healthcare spending will grow by an average of 6.3 percent each year over the next decade, whereas pre-reform projections pegged annual growth at 6.1 percent.

Republicans have latched onto the figures as evidence that the new reform law has failed in one of its central purposes: to bend the health cost curve down to sustainable levels.

But Obama rejected those criticisms, arguing his pitch for reform included warning that the process would be a long one.

"I said at the time it wasn't going to happen tomorrow, it wasn't going to happen next year," Obama said. "It took us decades to get into a position where our health care costs were going up 6, 7, 10 percent a year. And so our goal is to slowly bring down those costs."

Obama has at least one statistic working in his favor: CMS says the annual rise in health spending between 2015 and 2019 — after the enormous insurance expansion of 2014 — will average less than the agency estimated pre-reform.

It's not as low as he wants, Obama said Friday. But it's getting there.

"If we can get — instead of healthcare costs going up 6 percent a year — it's going up at the level of inflation, maybe just slightly above inflation, we've made huge progress," he said.

Lies, Damned Lies – Obamacare 6 Months Later; It’s Time to Take Back the 20!.by Sarah Palin on Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 2:13pm.It’s now six months since President Obama took control of one-sixth of the private sector economy with his health care “reform,” and the first changes to our health care system come into effect today. Despite overwhelming public dislike of the bill, we were told that D.C. knows best, and there was nothing to worry about, and we’d be better off swallowing the pill called Obamacare; so, in defiance of the will of the people, the President and his party rammed through this mother of all unfunded mandates. Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to pass the bill so that Americans could “find out what is in it.” We found out that it’s even worse than we feared.

Remember when the president said, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? Not true. In Texas alone a record number of doctors are leaving the Medicare system because of the cuts in reimbursements forced on them by Obamacare! The president of the Texas Medical Association, Dr. Susan Bailey, warns that “the Medicare system is beginning to implode.”

Remember the Obama administration’s promise that Obamacare would cut a typical family’s premium “by up to $2500 a year”? Not true. In fact, fueled by reports that insurers expect premiums to rise by as much as 25 percent as a result of Obamacare, Senate Democrats are contemplating the introduction of price controls.

Remember when the president said in his address to Congress that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions”? That turned out to be yet another one of those “You lie!” moments. We found out that Obamacare-mandated high risk insurance pools set up in states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico will fund abortions after all.

Remember the promise that Obamacare would “strengthen small businesses”? Not true either. The net result of Obamacare is that small businesses will face higher health care costs, new Medicare taxes, and higher regulation compliance costs, while the much-hyped health care tax credit for small businesses turns out to be almost impossible to obtain.

Remember the president’s promise that his bill would ensure “everyone [has] some basic security”? False again. Besides the great uncertainty that Obamacare hampers businesses with, companies now find it is actually cheaper to pay the $2000 per employee fine imposed by Obamacare than to keep insuring their workforce. This leaves millions of American workers at risk of losing their employer-provided health insurance.

And remember when the Obama administration said they would not be “rationing care” in the future? That ol’ “death panels” thing I wrote about last year? That was before Obamacare was passed. Once it passed, they admitted there was going to be rationing after all. There has to be. The reality of Obamacare is that it enshrines what the New York Times called “The Power of No” – the government’s power to say no to your request for treatment of the people you love. The fact that the president used a recess appointment to push through the nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells you all you need to know about this administration’s intentions. After all, Berwick is the man who said, “The decision is not whether we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

By the way, when the administration was talking about that independent board that has the statutory power to decide which categories of treatment are worthy of funding based on efficiency calculations (that, again, sounded to me like a panel of faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions about your loved ones – which, again, is what I referred to as a “death panel”), it was another opportunity for Americans to hear the truth about Obamacare’s intentions.

So, yes, those rationing “death panels” are there, and so are the tax increases that the president also promised were “absolutely not” in his bill. (Aren’t you tiring of the untruths coming from this White House and the liberals in Congress?) When the state of Florida filed a challenge to Obamacare on the basis that the mandates in the bill are unconstitutional, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the suit by citing the Anti-Injunction Act, which blocks courts from interfering with the federal government’s ability to collect taxes. Yes, taxes! Once the bill was passed it was no longer politically inconvenient for the Obama administration to admit that it makes no difference whether the payment is a tax or a penalty because it’s “assessed and collected in the same manner.” The National Taxpayer Advocate has already warned that “Congress must provide sufficient funding” to allow the IRS to collect this new tax. Pretty soon we’ll be paying taxes just to make it possible for the IRS to collect all the additional taxes under Obamacare! Seems as if this is another surprise that the public found out about after the bill was rammed through.

But perhaps the most ridiculous promise of all was the president’s assurance that Obamacare will lead to “bending the curve” on health care spending. Yes, rationing is a part of the new system, and yes, Obamacare does raise taxes. But because the new government managed system is so incredibly complicated and expensive to run, health care spending will actually rise instead of fall. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the Congressional Budget Office’s admittance that the CBO’s original estimate of the total costs of the bill were off by around $115 billion. Its new estimate is now above $1 trillion, and even that may be way too low. A more realistic figure calculated by the Pacific Research Institute puts the number at $2.5 to $3 trillion over the next 10 years! This is probably what President Obama was referring to when he admitted recently that he had known all along that “at the margins” his proposals were going to drive up costs. Give us a break! Only in this administration would they refer to a $3 trillion spending increase as “marginal.” Next time he comes to us with another one of his harebrained proposals for a budget-busting federal power grab, let’s make sure we remember the president’s admission that he was lying all along when he told us his health care plan was going to cut costs. He is increasing costs. He admits it now. Period.

Higher costs and worse care – is it any wonder why people are overwhelmingly in favor of repealing and replacing Obamacare? Politicians who have vacillated on this issue need to be fired. Candidates who don’t support “repeal and replace” don’t deserve your support. No amount of money spent on Washington’s “government-wide apolitical public information campaign” (otherwise known as “propaganda”) will convince Americans that this awful legislation is anything other than a debt-driven big government train wreck. We need to repeal and replace it, and that can only happen if we elect a new Congress that will make scrapping Obamacare one of its top priorities. We can replace it with pro-private sector, patient-oriented reform that the GOP has proposed.

On March 23, when Obamacare was signed into law, I launched my “Take back the 20” campaign, focusing on 20 congressional districts that John McCain and I carried in 2008 which are or were represented by members of Congress who voted in favor of Obamacare. They need to be held accountable for those votes. They voted for Obamacare. Now we can vote against them. We need to replace them with representatives who will respect the will of the people.

TakeBackthe20.com provides information about the candidates in these 20 districts who are committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare. It has links to their personal websites and their donation pages. It allows you to read up on them, and then support them in their race to defeat those who gave us this terrible bill.

We have to send Washington a message that it’s not acceptable to disregard the will of the people. We have to tell them enough is enough. No more defying the Constitution. No more driving us off a financial cliff. We must repeal and replace Obamacare with patient-centered, results-driven, free market reform that provides solutions to people of all income levels without bankrupting our country.

Among President Obama's core health-care promises was that Americans can keep their current coverage if they like it. Among the reasons that a new ObamaCare squall blows in every other day is that this claim simply is not true, as people are discovering.

The latest fracas was incited by Janet Adamy's scoop in the Journal this week that McDonald's Corp. may be forced to cancel its current coverage for 29,500 employees as a result of ObamaCare. McDonald's told Health and Human Services regulators that new mandates will make its plans "economically prohibitive" and cause "a huge disruption" unless it gets a waiver.

At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claimed that the Journal story was "flat-out wrong," adding that "I'm sorry that they were not more accurate in their reporting." If only for the sake of her own credibility, at some point Ms. Sebelius is going to have to try to persuade people who actually know something about the industries she regulates.

In a statement, McDonald's did say that it was "completely false" to suggest that "we plan to drop health care coverage for our employees," and "regardless of how the regulations evolve over the next several months, McDonald's is committed to providing competitive pay and benefits." No doubt that's true: McDonald's will still need to attract workers—not to mention that corporations of its size and brand recognition are very sensitive to political intimidation.

But McDonald's didn't deny that the new rules will wipe out its existing plans. And that's precisely the point. The entire philosophical and policy architecture of ObamaCare is explicitly designed to standardize health benefits and how those benefits should be paid for. Those choices and tradeoffs will be made for everyone by Ms. Sebelius's regulators.

Dr. Nan Hayworth explains why she left medicine for politics and is now running in a toss-up race for a House seat..At issue in the McDonald's dust-up is a type of low-cost, low-benefit insurance known as "mini-med." These plans cover most medical services but generally have an annual deductible or benefit cap between $1,000 and $10,000. Unlike more comprehensive plans, there's no catastrophic coverage. Essentially, the very low premiums—under $100 a month—amount to prepaying for routine expenses like office checkups and E.R. visits.

Around 2.5 million consumers are covered by "mini-med" policies, most of them concentrated in low-wage industries like fast food, hospitality and retail that have large numbers of part-time or temporary workers. In the case of the restaurants, 75% of the workforce turns over every year and nearly half are under age 25. Mini-med plans are a temporary stopgap for businesses that have low margins and face high labor and health costs.

But Democrats hate mini-med and other skinny-benefit plans, calling them "underinsurance." ObamaCare is meant to run them out of the market by mandating benefits, eliminating coverage caps and certain technical rules about how premiums must be spent. This despite the fact that Arkansas, Connecticut and Tennessee sponsor their own mini-med plans for state residents as better than having no insurance at all.

In other words, the choice is between relatively affordable coverage that isn't as generous as Democrats think it should be and dumping coverage entirely. McDonald's may eventually offer the high-cost plans that Ms. Sebelius favors, or get its waiver, but many of its less profitable or smaller competitors won't. While subsidized ObamaCare options will be available in 2014, those costs will merely be transferred to taxpayers.

Ms. Sebelius facetiously called the Journal "my favorite newspaper" at the Monitor breakfast, and she'll no doubt continue to shoot the messenger. What everyone else should understand is that the almost daily damage we're seeing as this law takes effect is not unintended. It is the heart and soul of ObamaCare.

3M to dump retirees from medical coverage posted at 10:55 am on October 5, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Remember when Barack Obama repeatedly promised that no one’s current coverage would have to change if Congress approved the health-care overhaul he demanded? When the ObamaCare bill passed, the Associated Press suddenly discovered that the change of tax law that would supposedly generate billions of dollars to pay for the costs of the bill would also drive companies to dump retirees from their existing drug coverage and push them into Medicare. Minnesota-based 3M became one of the first large corporations to do just that — and push retirees off of all their plans as well:

Instead, the company will direct retirees to Medicare-backed insurance programs, and will provide reimbursement for that coverage. It’ll also reimburse retirees who are too young for Medicare; the company didn’t provide further details.

The company made the changes known in a memo to employees Friday; news of the move was reported in The Wall Street Journal and confirmed Monday by 3M spokeswoman Jackie Berry.

The ObamaCare bill created a fund to subsidize employers who didn’t dump their retirees, but the WSJ notes that it simply wasn’t enough to change the negative incentives created by the government interventions:

The changes won’t start to phase in until 2013. But they show how companies are beginning to respond to the new law, which should make it easier for people in their 50s and early-60s to find affordable policies on their own. While thousands of employers are tapping new funds from the law to keep retiree plans, 3M illustrates that others may not opt to retain such plans over the next few years. …

Democrats that crafted the legislation say they tried to incentivize companies to keep their retiree coverage intact, especially until 2014. The law creates a $5 billion fund for employers and unions to offset the cost of retiree health benefits. More than 2,000 entities, including many large public companies, have already been approved to submit claims for such reimbursement. 3M did not apply.

How did Democrats come up with the $5 billion figure for subsidies to protect retirees from losing their plans? From the looks of it, they simply made it up. They also didn’t do much calculation to determine whether the subsidies would actually incentivize employers into rejecting this strategy for cost savings. To some extent, they may not have been able to make that calculation, because thanks to the massive amount of ambiguity in the bill, no one can really say for sure what the future costs would be. And of course, that’s why 3M chose now to dump the retirees.

3m has 23,000 retirees, many of them likely to be living in Minnesota. They’re also likely to vote in the upcoming midterms, perhaps even more likely now than ever. That won’t be good news for House Democrats in the Minnesota delegation hoping to win a new term in four weeks.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Crucial pieces of a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration's health care overhaul can go to trial, with a judge ruling Thursday he wants to hear more arguments over whether it's constitutional to force citizens to buy health insurance.

In a written ruling, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said it also needs to be decided whether it's constitutional to penalize people who do not buy insurance with taxes and to require states to expand their Medicaid programs. Another federal judge in Michigan threw out a similar lawsuit last week.

Vinson set a hearing for Dec. 16. The lawsuits will likely wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In his 65-page ruling, Vinson largely agreed with the 20 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, saying Congress was intentionally unclear when it created penalties in the legislation. The states have argued that Congress is overstepping its constitutional authority by penalizing people for not doing something — not buying health insurance.

The penalties for those who do not buy insurance are never referred to as taxes in the 2,700-page act, Vinson wrote. Attorneys for the Obama administration argued at a September hearing that the penalties should be considered a tax levied by Congress — as allowed by its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

"One could reasonably infer that Congress proceeded as it did specifically because it did not want the penalty to be 'scrutinized' as a $4 billion annual tax increase," Vinson wrote.

"It seems likely that the members of congress merely called it a penalty and did not describe it as revenue-generating to try and insulate themselves from the potential electoral ramifications of their votes."

The administration's attorneys had told Vinson last month that without the regulatory power to ensure young and healthy people buy health insurance, the health care plan will not survive.

Vinson also took issue with the administration's argument that the states and individual taxpayers must wait until 2014, when some of the changes take effect, to file any lawsuits. Vinson said businesses and states are feeling the ramifications of the law now.

The health care act leaves states with the difficult choice of expanding their Medicaid programs and taking on major expenses or entirely withdrawing from the insurance program for the poor, Vinson wrote. In states like Florida — where 26 percent of the state budget is devoted to Medicaid, according to the lawsuit — the law amounts to coercion, Vinson wrote.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum praised the ruling.

"It is the first step to having the individual mandate declared unconstitutional and upholding state sovereignty in our federal system," McCollum said in a statement.

He filed the lawsuit just minutes after President Barack Obama signed the 10-year, $938 billion health care bill into law in March.

Attorneys for the government did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment on the ruling.

Vinson's ruling comes a week after District Judge George Caram Steeh in Detroit ruled that the mandate to get insurance by 2014 and the financial penalty for skipping coverage are legal. He said Congress was trying to lower the overall cost of insurance by requiring participation.

There is also a lawsuit pending in Virginia. A federal judge there has allowed the lawsuit to continue, ruling the overhaul raises complex constitutional issues.

The other states involved in the lawsuit Vinson is hearing are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.

IDK Sly, I'm not so sure that a federal court is going to decide that the federal government can't do something that they want to do... The fed. ct. does seem to enjoy limiting Congress' powers, but I don't have confidence that they're going to limit federal authority over the states.

I've said all along that this thing IS legal, it's just legal for different reasons than what Congress was initially arguing. If they place the health care bill under Congress' taxing and spending powers its perfectly fine. If you remember when this thing first came out I said the exact same thing. Barack Obama exclaimed over and over that "THIS IS NOT A TAX"... Notice how he's going back on that now...

October 14th, 2010, 10:38 pm

njroar

QB Coach - Brian Callahan

Joined: September 25th, 2007, 3:20 amPosts: 3233

Re: Universal Health Care

The Florida court just threw out the argument of calling it a tax. It was written specifically as a mandate through the commerce clause, so its impossible to go back to the tax argument. And I have a feeling that the SCOTUS will strike it down because of that. If the Federal Government gained the ability to mandate citizens to buy something from a private company, it would be a bad precedent. Next time, there won't be bailouts that grow the deficit, they'll just mandate purchases. New York Times is failing... everyone has to subscribe. I know it sounds far fetched, but if that's the precedent, then you can guarantee someone in congress will try it and eventually get something passed.

So it has to go to court on the basis on it being a mandate through the commerce clause, and the argument that by the 10th amendment, they can't force more medicaid spending on the states then they already agreed too. States could then just opt out of medicaid all together, or you'd have some states go default.

October 15th, 2010, 4:43 pm

wjb21ndtown

Re: Universal Health Care

njroar wrote:

The Florida court just threw out the argument of calling it a tax. It was written specifically as a mandate through the commerce clause, so its impossible to go back to the tax argument. And I have a feeling that the SCOTUS will strike it down because of that. If the Federal Government gained the ability to mandate citizens to buy something from a private company, it would be a bad precedent. Next time, there won't be bailouts that grow the deficit, they'll just mandate purchases. New York Times is failing... everyone has to subscribe. I know it sounds far fetched, but if that's the precedent, then you can guarantee someone in congress will try it and eventually get something passed.

So it has to go to court on the basis on it being a mandate through the commerce clause, and the argument that by the 10th amendment, they can't force more medicaid spending on the states then they already agreed too. States could then just opt out of medicaid all together, or you'd have some states go default.

I agree that without the taxing and spending clause it may get thrown out, I just don't see what's stopping them from raising the argument before the SCOTUS... I realize this FL ruling, but I don't put much faith in what a State Court has to say on this matter.

October 15th, 2010, 4:49 pm

njroar

QB Coach - Brian Callahan

Joined: September 25th, 2007, 3:20 amPosts: 3233

Re: Universal Health Care

The State court ruled that they can't argue that its a tax now, because the law as passed, says its not and it specifically says they have the ability via the commerce clause. They could try and rewrite the bill, but then it'd have to go through congress and the senate again and they definitely don't have the votes to get it passed. They could raise the issue again, but they'll just look at the lower ruling when it comes up. The SCOTUS will look at the constitutionality of the case as is, not try to change the wording of the bill to mean something else, especially with a conservative majority. And the question will come up if Kagan was involved with the case in anyway prior to her being nominated for the court. She had to excuse herself from 24 of the 51 initial hearings, so even a 4-4 split, would revert back to the lower courts decision.

The biggest thing about this case, is that the bill isn't divided into sections, so if this is declared unconstitutional, the entire bill fails. It might just end up being the biggest case we see in our lifetime.

wjb, I see your point, but njroar already has said a lot of what I would have in response. BTW, good job njroar. If they had written the individual mandate as a tax, they may have gotten away with it, but they didn't. This will go to the Supreme Court and Obama will lose (assuming that the current court stays intact) by 5-4 (or 5-3 if Kagan is forced to recuse herself). The government simply can't demand that citizens purchase a good or service from a private entity under the Constitution. If they could, why not force us to buy a new car from Government Motors every 5 years or so?

Furthermore, as njroar stated above, they really screwed up when they wrote this bill. They should have included a section (which they do in most bills) that maintains the remainder of the law if any part of it gets overturned. Fortunately, they forgot that part, so if any element of Obamacare gets ruled unconstitutional, the entire thing will be deemed so. With that said, I'm sure they've figured a way around that though.

_________________

October 16th, 2010, 8:24 am

njroar

QB Coach - Brian Callahan

Joined: September 25th, 2007, 3:20 amPosts: 3233

Re: Universal Health Care

And the real issue with health care.... We DO need reform, but I'm glad they messed this up. If it weren't directly for this bill, the country wouldn't have woken up politically. That's the plus. The real issues with this bill that were immediately relevant, was that it did absolutely nothing to control costs. They said it would cost less because everyone has it, but the trickle up poverty method has never worked. All it does it shift control.

I'd have worked with insurance companies to identify the major issues that raise costs. Extend the period before Generic drugs can be started, so that we wouldn't be bombarded with drug ads because they only have a limited time to recoup their research investment. I believe its 5 years now, make it 10 or come up with a solution that lowers the cost substantially. If the originals were cheaper, would we even need generics?

If we could move across state lines, would the insurance companies need as many business offices with administration staff taking a bulk of the funds that funnel into the system? With less overhead costs, the costs given to the customers should drop. With as much money running into the system now, to only have a 4% margin, its easy to see that too many salaries are a drain.

I havent' had coverage for over 6 years now, but luckily I only really need to see a doctor once every 3 years. It costs a lot when I do have to go to the hospital for something, but payment plans ease that burden. So i could benefit by the health care law, but its just the wrong system period.

Bump. Please read this thread. It will show you that Obama and the Democrats were lying about Obamacare in the early stages while accusing the Republicans of doing so. Even though, at the time, the Democrats and the corrupt lamestream media were the ones doing the lying as we can all see the truth now.